Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school’s bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.
Cemetery Boys
Awards
Tumble
Before she decides whether to accept her stepfather’s proposal of adoption, twelve-year-old Adela Ramírez reaches out to her estranged biological father–who is in the midst of a career comeback as a luchador and the eccentric extended family of wrestlers she has never met, bringing Adela closer to understanding the expansive definition of family.
Kapaemahu
Four individuals of dual male and female spirit bring their healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii, where they are beloved for their gentle ways and miraculous cures and where they imbue four giant boulders with their powers.
We Are Water Protectors
When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth and poison her people’s water, one young water protector takes a stand to defend Earth’s most sacred resource.
This book is discussed in WOW Review: Volume 14, Issue 2, WOW Currents: Water In Indigenous Children’s Literature, and WOW Currents: Environmental Sciences.
All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team
A unique account of the amazing Thai cave rescue told in a heart-racing, you-are-there style that blends suspense, science, and cultural insight. On June 23, 2018, twelve young players of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach enter a cave in northern Thailand seeking an afternoon’s adventure. But when they turn to leave, rising floodwaters block their path out. The boys are trapped! Before long, news of the missing team spreads, launching a seventeen-day rescue operation involving thousands of rescuers from around the globe. As the world sits vigil, people begin to wonder: how long can a group of ordinary kids survive in complete darkness, with no food or clean water? Luckily, the Wild Boars are a very extraordinary “ordinary” group. Combining firsthand interviews of rescue workers with in-depth science and details of the region’s culture and religion, author Christina Soontornvat–who was visiting family in Northern Thailand when the Wild Boars went missing–masterfully shows how both the complex engineering operation above ground and the mental struggles of the thirteen young people below proved critical in the life-or-death mission. Meticulously researched and generously illustrated with photographs, this page-turner includes an author’s note describing her experience meeting the team, detailed source notes, and a bibliography to fully immerse readers in the most ambitious cave rescue in history.
Walking In Two Worlds
Bugz is caught between two worlds. In the real world, she’s a shy and self-conscious Indigenous teen who faces the stresses of teenage angst and life on the Rez. But in the virtual world, her alter ego is not just confident but dominant in a massively multiplayer video game universe.
Feng is a teen boy who has been sent from China to live with his aunt, a doctor on the Rez, after his online activity suggests he may be developing extremist sympathies. Meeting each other in real life, as well as in the virtual world, Bugz and Feng immediately relate to each other as outsiders and as avid gamers. And as their connection is strengthened through their virtual adventures, they find that they have much in common in the real world, too: both must decide what to do in the face of temptations and pitfalls, and both must grapple with the impacts of family challenges and community trauma.
But betrayal threatens everything Bugz has built in the virtual world, as well as her relationships in the real world, and it will take all her newfound strength to restore her friendship with Feng and reconcile the parallel aspects of her life: the traditional and the mainstream, the east and the west, the real and the virtual.
Ducks Overboard!: A True Story Of Plastic In Our Oceans
If a shipping container filled with 28,000 plastic ducks spilled into the Pacific Ocean, where would all those ducks go? Inspired by a real incident, this captivating and innovative look at the pollution crisis in our oceans follows one of the ducks as it is washed away on ocean currents, encountering plastic-endangered whales and sea turtles and passing through the giant floating island of marine debris known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. From the author-illustrator of the acclaimed Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover comes a highly accessible and graphically stylish picture book with an ultimately hopeful message about environmental issues and the state of our oceans. An end map documents the widely scattered journey of the real-life plastic ducks, showing where they have been found, as well as facts about the ways plastic is affecting various parts of the world.
All The Colors Of Life
Celebrated artist Lisa Aisato distills the many stages of life, in all their rainbow hues, into a lushly illustrated book that will inspire and comfort readers at all moments of their journeys. More than one hundred beautiful images, stunning in their diversity, each illustration an exuberant story unto itself.
My Words Flew Away Like Birds
A girl learns words in a new language to prepare for her move to a new country. But when her family arrives, everyone speaks so fast and “all her words fly away like birds.” The girl waits, and watches, and listens, trying to figure things out. Only, it’s hard. Then one day the girl meets someone who needs her help. And as she makes a new friend, the new words start to come easier — becoming her words, at last.
Moon Pops
One sweltering summer night, while the many residents of one apartment building are struggling to fall asleep, the moon begins to melt. Granny hears it dripping and runs out to catch the moon drops in a bucket. At first unsure what do with the drops, she is soon inspired to turn them into popsicles—moon pops!—to help cool down her neighbors.
But as everyone drifts off to sleep, a new problem arises. The fabled rabbits who, according to folklore live on the moon, have lost their home! With the last of the moon drops, Granny grows a new moon from the potted plant in her window. As the moon ascends to the starry sky above, the rabbits return to their home, and Granny returns to her bed.